


The Boy Who Was

by esama



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character Bashing, Crossover, Gen, Rebirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 07:45:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney McKay spends a moment paying his "respect" to a boy who once lived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy Who Was

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on fanfiction.net on 10/01/2008  
> Proofread by Darlene and Sarah

Rodney stared at the dust gathering on top of the box. There was a fine layer of it, but it was there, just visible in the right light and for some reason he found it captivating. To his surprise he found himself ignoring the part of him that was screaming at him to go scream at whoever was in charge of the storage rooms because, hello, priceless alien devices here and someone had let them gather dust!

But that would have to wait. The dust layer looked like it was just waiting for someone to write something in it. The thought was _nagging_ at the back of his head, telling him that _he_ was supposed to write something in it. Write something specific. In the dust. How stupid was that?

Frowning and shaking his head with annoyed indignation, he raised his wrist and glanced at his digital watch. It was a watch he’d built from the parts of two watches and certain pieces of Ancient equipment no one would miss. Now the watch not only displayed the proper time and date, working in the twenty-six hour day cycle of Atlantis perfectly, but it also showed the proper time and date on _Earth_.

In Atlantis they were experiencing what could possibly be winter, this deduced from the planet's orbit around its star. Since there were no actual calendars around and theirs didn't work when there were extra days in the year, Rodney had decided that counting time in Atlantis started from the moment they had stepped into the fair city. Right then they were at their two hundred and fifth day of the first year.

 _'Huh, missed the two-hundred-day anniversary,'_ Rodney mused to himself without actual interest or care. It was somewhat of an accomplishment. Over two hundred days in the Pegasus galaxy and they were still alive.

Then he looked at the smaller digits that told the time on Earth. In Colorado Springs the clock was just a little past three in the morning and the date… the date. _'Oh, I see,'_ he thought with a displeased frown and looked up to the box again, to the dust. _'Hm. Should I…?'_

A quick glance around showed him that there was no one else in the storage room - which might not have been a storage room originally, it might've been an Ancient ball room for all he knew. But that didn't matter. He was alone, it was _the_ day and there was a layer of dust right there, taunting him. _'Fine, you poor bastard,'_ he thought with a certain measure of impatience. _'I'll play along. Just this once.'_

Reaching out his hand, he wrote two words into the dust. _Happy Birthday_. Then, shaking the dust off his fingers, he folded his hands and glared at the words and all the memories they brought back - all the things he’d tried for years and years not to think about. But this time his mind - his exceedingly brilliant mind, thank you very much - decided to pay mental homage to a poor pitiful bastard who should've been buried and forgotten long ago. And he remembered.

He remembered that pitiful imbecile who he would've preferred to forget long ago. The kid with nothing extraordinary about him - and what intelligence the bastard had had, he’d been forced to hide because of his pig of a cousin, rhino of an uncle and horse of an aunt. They’d hated the kid, stunted his growth in any way possible. And the idiot had been well aware of it - and adjusted and resigned to it! The spineless moron.

The brat had grown, spending his years doing nothing important or beneficial and ignoring his own schooling. And that hadn't changed even when he had gotten the chance to join an incredible school -- well, it had seemed incredible at the time, now Rodney found the very thought of the place highly insulting. He had been privileged enough to join that school of Moron-craft and Stupidity, and had he studied? No. He’d spent all his time looking for trouble and doing incredibly unintelligent things like all reckless kids his age.

Only when there’d been an insane megalomaniac looking for ways to kill him had he actually studied, and even then he had relied on his more intelligent friends to help him, the bastard. Rather like Sheppard did here, but even the Major was some thousand times more intelligent than the kid. That moron had relied on luck way too many times, it's a wonder he hadn't gotten killed before he turned twelve. At least Sheppard had a P90 in his hands every time he wanted to flirt with impending doom. Most of the time anyway.

The pitiful bastard, who wouldn't let Rodney forget him, had died when he had been seventeen. And damn if the kid hadn't deserved it. For years Rodney had driven himself into countless mental rants over the sheer stupidity of what the moron had done. Who walks up to a raging lunatic when the raging lunatic wants to kill them and takes it without fighting? Even Sheppard wasn't that stupid. Hell, even Kavanaugh wasn't that stupid.

Rodney snorted, staring at the words he’d written. "Dim-wit," he muttered. "No sense of self-preservation whatsoever. You deserved what you got."

He remembered his _own_ childhood. It had started pretty slowly, but it had been better than the poor bastard's childhood, that was for sure. At a very early age he’d had intelligence beyond that of any normal child, but he hadn't taken advantage of it at first. He’d wanted to, how did that saying go, get his bearings first? Whatever. He’d wanted to look around and see what sort of family he’d been born into, what kind of world he lived in.

Rodney's parents could've been better. They’d probably liked each other at some point, but that had probably started fading around the time he had been born. His parents had been snappish with each other, griping about the little things all the time. They hadn't liked each other too much at that time - and they hadn't liked him.

Maybe it was some sort of universal rule. He just couldn't be liked by the people who were supposed to take care of him.

He hadn't been more than two when he’d realised his parents didn't appreciate him as much as he’d hoped. He’d tried to get that appreciation… but they hadn't really cared that he could spell his name before the age of three. Hell, he’d been able to read and write perfectly - well, maybe with his handwriting was a bit wobbly, but it was still understandable. And they hadn't given a damn, best he’d gotten was, "That's very nice Meredith," before his mother had turned to his father and they’d started an argument about some food item he’d forgotten to buy.

Child prodigy, some might've called him, but of course his lovely parents hadn't been among those people. Well, it had been alright, he’d just decided to come up with something to make them like him, to make them appreciate him. No one could hate a skilled child, right? If they didn't like him for what he was, then he would become something more likeable.

When he’d heard his mother speak of how elegant and sophisticated pianists were, he’d decided that music was it. Not only because of her interest, but because it was something he’d never done or even considered doing before - it had seemed alluring. His parents hadn't been impressed, but they had paid for the lessons. He’d been four.

For a while it had seemed to go extremely well. He learned quickly -- being able to read and write helped a lot - and he could play better than most kids three times his age. His parents had almost seemed like they had been proud… and then his mother had gotten pregnant and their attention had shifted. They’d started arguing more and more and no matter how good Rodney was on the piano, it hadn't mattered.

Jeanie had been born red and screaming while Rodney's mother had been screaming that she hated Rodney's father and that they would never do this again. Rodney had wanted to hold his baby sister but the doctors hadn't let him, and neither had his mother. They hadn't let him touch Jeanie until his sister was almost seven months old. They’d been certain that he'd break her.

Never having had siblings before he hadn't known how to take it all, but Jeanie had been okay for a seemingly brainless creature. Sort of adorable too, when she didn't smell horrible and wasn't spilling her food all over the place. She’d seemed to like his playing - or it might've been that she liked the noises his piano made whenever she banged her fists on the keys. Either way, she ended up being the McKay Rodney liked the most.

Considering their wonderful relationship these days, that wasn't saying much.

Rodney had, very quickly after meeting them, started to dislike the kids his age. Though somehow he could understand that at that age they couldn't exactly be rocket scientists, there were times when they just seemed… retarded. When he’d entered school for the first time, he spent hours wondering how any of those kids were supposed to get a proper education - they simply didn't have the brains for it.

He stayed in that grade only for a little while before he was transferred into another grade. Being the youngest and still smartest among that class hadn't exactly made him popular, but he’d tried to be nice - he, Rodney McKay, had intentionally tried to be nice in the hope that people would like him. Damn, had he been naïve back then.

Then the acceptance letter he’d been waiting for failed to come. Well, in one way it didn't surprise him at all. He could remember every moment of his life with sharp precision and nothing… unusual had ever happened. Nothing unexplained. The lack of a letter just backed up his suspicion. Whatever the bastard had had… Rodney lacked. That started the downwards spiral, because even though he assured himself that he could do just as well without those powers… he was bitter.

Rodney had still wanted to be a pianist back then, to play in big concert halls to vast audiences. After the letter hadn't come, he’d thrown himself into that dream, certain that it would make things better. And then, when he’d been about twelve, his piano instructor crushed that dream. "You’re technically perfect, Rodney," the man had said in that indulgent, patronising tone which Rodney had since learned to hate. "But you just don't have the soul." That had been the last piano lesson Rodney had ever taken - the last time he had touched a piano, too.

At the time he had been picked on in school, too. The students, all of whom were years older than him, hated him for his intelligence and so did the teachers - especially the teachers. They just couldn't handle a kid as young as him who was way smarter than they were. Just after he’d stopped taking piano lessons, the teasing turned into outright bullying. Someone painted his locker and kicked it in, his books were stolen or ripped, the boys pushed him around in the hallways… and the teachers did nothing about it. Neither did his parents.

It was around then when he snapped. Or learned to snap, that was maybe a better way of describing it. They didn't like him? Well, to hell with them then. He didn't even like _them_ so why should he be nice to them? He’d turned away from acting nice and concentrated on his studying, embracing his intelligence to the fullest. They didn't like his intelligence? Sucks to be them. For the first time he’d actually taken advantage of it despite everything else and it had been the solidest decision he had ever made. He would be all he could be, and no one would stop him, no one would hinder him. He would be as brilliant as possible.

He found his light in science when he was thirteen. It just… made sense. Better sense than anything had before. And maybe it was a way of retaliation for the lack of the letter. He found himself wondering about things like the powers of _that bastard_ and his world. He started working on a theory of how they worked and what made them possible when he was fourteen. Over the years he scrapped the theory and begun anew, over and over again - only lately it had started to make sense, thanks to the facts and variables the Stargate Program and everything involved had given him.

As he’d embraced science with all he had, he’d started to look back with loathing. The more Rodney learned, the more he came to the conclusion that the brat was a useless human being who’d deserved his death. It was around then when Rodney had given him the titles of _bastard_ and _idiot_ and _moron_ and _imbecile_ and _half-witted waste of_ _space_. And he’d concluded that everything the brat had known was idiocy, the brat's world was pure lunacy, and all that was wrapped into a neat little package of primitivism and superstition. Waste. Pure, utter waste. He swore to be nothing like the bastard and his world.

Building an A-bomb for a science fair maybe wasn't the best way to go about that, but hey, it got him noticed. Ever since then, he’d been under the microscope. Maybe not the best place to be, but looking back now… it’d been one of the better things he had done. That little A-bomb had been, in a way, his ticket to the Stargate Program. That was also when he’d decided to _always_ think before doing something stupid - or preferably, never do anything stupid.

Eventually he’d come to the conclusion that, without fail, everyone around him was an idiot who had no idea what they were doing. Jeanie was still okay; she had a good brain on her when she grew to be old enough to actually use it. Maybe she wasn't as brilliant as he was, but she was still way better than most people Rodney had the _privilege_ to know. Aside from her, Rodney never bothered being anything more or less than he was. So, when they were doing something he found senseless, he was sure to let them know it.

Being able to say everything he thought and insult everyone who he thought deserved it… it was relieving. Like he’d shaken off some burden everyone else dragged around with them. The more he’d thought about it, the stronger this opinion became. Human beings, by nature, were a bunch of sycophants, living to please each other so that they can in return be pleased. Friends are nothing more than people who want something you have and they don't. Family are nothing but people related by blood, parents nothing but caretakers for the children who will carry their genes. Simple animalistic instincts. It was just chemistry and selfishness.

The world made so much more sense after that. And so what if he was alone with this theory? He was right, they were wrong, and he knew it. That was all he needed. Who wanted a bunch of morons around anyway?

"You would've done so much better if you’d realised that from the beginning," Rodney said to the words in the dust. "But no. You spent your entire life pleasing selfish people who only wanted to use you - and you died for them, for a group of bipolar turncoats, sheep and leeches."

A quiet boy's voice in the back of his head whispered memories of friends and family and a home from another lifetime. It wondered why Rodney had never returned to _that place_ to see how they were doing, how that world was doing. Why he’d abandoned everything that could've been, just because he hadn't been born with the affinity…? It said all the things Rodney had for years and years blocked out.

 The Chief Science Officer of the Atlantis Expedition snorted and shook his head. "Make a wish, Harry," he whispered almost maliciously before wiping the dust away with his hand. The voice in his head was squashed once more, and as he turned to return to the laboratory, he swore to keep the stupid brat quiet for another year. The famous and magnificent boy who was. Hah.


End file.
